All Gujarati food is not sweet! #FoodocracyKitchens

Shital Kakad’s pav bhaaji for breakfast

#FoodocracyKitchens is a series where I bring to you food stories and memories of people belonging to different communities and parts of India who reside in Mumbai now. In this instalment, you will get a flavour of Gujarat through the food of a home chef friend of mine. She is a Mumbai girl though, but read on.

As I often do, last night too I wondered if Loaf was comfortable with our bringing Nimki in to the house as Nimki can be a bit pushy.

That perhaps explains why I woke up feeling fresher today than I have in the past few days. It could also be because I knew what was in store for breakfast and K and I were both excited about it! I even knew the song that I would play when I got breakfast ready. Not that I had much to do to be honest!

I asked Alexa to play chhaiya chhaiya (from the movie Dil Se) once I entered the kitchen and Baby Loaf was bemused to see me behave the way Little Nimki does at feed times. All jumpy and excited and impatient.

The excitement in the #finelychoppedkitchen was palpable and this was because our friend Shital Kakad had sent us her majestic pav bhaaji last night and I had kept it for breakfast.

After the unnamed pav bhaaji wala at Nariman Point, who would make it from scratch everyday (not dole it out from a canister like many other street vendors do) when I went down for lunch as a Senior Advertising Executive in ‘99- 2000, and Ashok at Fort, whose pav bhaaji I discovered as a VP in market research in 2010, and whose cart became a fixture in my Fort #finelychoppedfoodwalks later, Shital Kakad is the one whose pav bhaaji make me sing, and I have had many. It is really brilliant in terms of flavours and robustness and balance and leaves one feeling both nurtured and pumped up.

K loves it too. She loves it so much that she chose the pav bhaaji left from breakfast for dinner over the mangshor jhol (mutton curry) in the fridge. That is saying something.

To make the Mumbaiyya mood complete, I had my morning espresso in a cutting chai cup.

Bhaaji of pav bhaaji which is a melange of dishes just as Mumbai is a melange of communities

One of the earliest food origin stories that I had read (in the late 90s) was about how pav bhaaji was apparently invented by a street food guy using leftover veggies to feed traders in Mumbai waiting for the cotton stock exchange in UK to open. I can’t vouch for the veracity of the story or of the memory, but what I can tell you is that a well made pav bhaaji, like Shital’s, can make for the breakfast of champions. Even when prepared the previous evening. I re-heated the pav bhaaji on a saucepan and then the masala pav that Shital had given. Masala pav is when pav is smeared with maska (butter which lies at the heart of pav bhaaji) and spices. Street food folks normally press the pav on the tava (griddle) on which the pav bhaaji was made which, I think, is a great way of sanitising the pav (bread). The pav bhaaji is usually served piping hot which makes it safe too but often the oil used or food colouring used take away from the purity of the pav bhaaji. You need not worry about that in Shital’s of course.

Funnily enough, Shital’s Gujarati Kathiawadi masala khichdi, which I had for lunch, reminded me of my FCB Ulka Advertising Nariman Point days, just as her pav bhaaji had earlier in the day.

A soft spoken elderly gentleman, referred to as Bhatt ji, ran the canteen then. The canteen was a tiny room in a corner of the office with an electric heater and food was served at the desk. The only cooked dish (apart from Maggi and grilled sandwiches) that he had on offer was khichdi. The most exciting part of it was the misal ka fadsan which he gave with it and the mango pickle. Which did not really matter as there was such a lot of wonderful food around. However, on days when one did not have the time to step out, or if one was under the weather and did not want to eat out, then this was a bankable option.

Shital’s khichdi offered a bouquet of flavours though unlike Bhatt ji’s and was packed with veggies and I had a bit more of it than what you see on the plate. I took the last of the Rambandhu Nasik mango pickle at home to have it with.

Gujarati masala khichdi with bangda fry (smeared with turmeric, chilli powder and salt and fried)

The Bengali in me thought of pairing a maachh bhaaja (fish fry) with khuchuri. Given that what I had today was a bangda (Indian mackerel) fry, calling it tareli machhi like the Parsis do would make more sense. This is not a fish found in Bengali kitchens. The Parsis speak their own dialect of Gujarati of course.

Baby Loaf came up to the window and settled by me as I ate. I gave him a bit of bangda without masala and he loved it. Like his Mummy Loaf, this boy does love his fish!

Both Little Nimki and him jumped all over me earlier while I recorded my video lecture on brand positioning for home bakers for Bakedemy, which was rather embarrassing and funny too!

The bangda was from Poonam and of great quality. Incidentally, you used to get bangda fry in the swarthy Keralite men and the earthy Maharashtrian maushi (matron) run food stalls at Nariman Point back in the day. I’d go for the egg or chicken masala with porota at the former. In particular to one unofficially called the ‘Air India Canteen.’ As I had written recently, all these stalls were later cleared by the authorities and the place has a lot of its colour and life after that.

After bombil, parshe and pomfret, we now know that Baby Loaf loves bangda too

My first exposure to Gujarati food was at the house of a classmate from school named Deven Shah in Kolkata and I had really enjoyed the experience of the gala meal that his mother had cooked for us. This was 1991/92.

Later at the Gujarati thali restaurants in south Mumbai from ’97 onwards. I found the array of dishes in these, and the speed in which they were brought to one, rather overwhelming. The dominant flavour of the food was that of sweetness and I slotted Gujarati food as being sweet and not to my taste.

Then I was exposed to home cooked Gujarati food when I was invited for lunch in my earlier years in Mumbai at the house of my friends Kinnari and Dhrupal Shah, whose mother would lovingly feed us from her kitchen. Many years later at the house of Anaggh Desai whose mother (who is unfortunately no more), wife and daughter had cooked us. Then at the house of Heena Munshaw Ghildayal, mother of our friend Rushina Munshaw Ghildayal where the meal was cooked by their family Maharaj (cook). Then I fell in love with Pinky Chandan Dixit’s restaurant Soam and through all these experiences, with Gujarati food. A further taste of which I got when I went to Surat last year.

Meals at Shital’s house are always bounteous

I have spoken so far to people who migrated to Mumbai from other parts of the country in my #FoodocracyKitchens series.

This is not the case with Shital Kakad. She is an ‘out and out’ Mumbai girl. This has always been her city. Which is not surprising as Mumbai does have a sizeable Gujarati population, most of whom have stuck to their own culinary traditions.

She learnt her cooking from her dadi and her nani, her paternal and maternal grandmothers, and their style of cooking was Surti (of Surat). The city from which K’s mom hails too. Shital later learnt the Kathiawadi style of cooking from her mother in law. She is now writing a book on the diverse Gujarati food traditions that are represented in her kitchen.

She was not always in the ‘food business’ though. Shital had a fashion studio which she ran till 2012. She shut it and took a break and was wondering what to do next. That is when her husband, whom she calls her ‘bestie’ too, suggested she do something in food as she was passionate about cooking and feeding. Their house after all was where her cousins and other youngsters in the family would come to even after midnight to eat. Shital’s fridge was always stocked. Kitchen always fired up!

She learnt about food blogging and started her food blog in 2015, came across Sameer (whose birthday it is today) and Saloni Malkani of FBAI who encouraged her a lot, and slowly got to know more about the world of food. She was already taking orders for eggless desserts at this point and decided to make a foray into offering a wider range of dishes which included her native Gujarati ones and innovative vegetarian ones.

Her home chef enterprise got a boost post the lockdown as she decided to use the time to cook food at home and personally deliver it to a limited set of customers with her husband driving her, or send it with her driver, and thereby keep the circle of contact as tight as possible. Through this, she has kept herself happy and has brought happiness to the lives of the fans of her food.

When I asked Shital what drives her when it comes to cooking and promoting Gujarati food, she said “I want to talk about the huge variety that exists in Gujarati food, that the cuisine goes beyond theplas and dhoklas; and that all GUJARATI FOOD IS NOT SWEET.’

Well, the pav bhaaji and khichdi that she sent definitely weren’t sweet. And Shital definitely is one of the sweetest and nicest people around.

PS: How the lockdown helped revive the blog: www.finelychopped.net

I want to share something very exciting that I just discovered. You might remember my occasionally writing about how the blog readership numbers seem to be stagnant for ages. That the medium seems to be almost dead.

I had accepted this as a fact of life. Yet, I did not want to give up on the blog and initiated a lot of measures to refresh it. I started posting more regularly here thanks to the lockdown, even if it meant using extracts from my Instagram page, as I have partly done in this case too. I shared more recipes as I was cooking more after long thanks to the lockdown. I shared my YouTube recipe videos and #FoodocracyIndia podcast videos here. More ‘lockdown babies’. Started #foodocracykitchen in the lockdown as a dedicated series that used the blog as an anchor. I added two new sections to each post this month. #houseofcats showing what the cats were up to. I ignored the odd negative comment about this as I knew that many looked forward to seeing Baby Loaf and litte Nimki. The other, a playlist from the #finelycchoppedkitchen. I’d upload YouTube videos of songs I’d get Alexa to play in the kitchen while I cooked. Most recently I changed the viewing format back to the dynamic blogger format.

I occasionally looked at the stats during this period and did not seem to see any change. I did not expect any. I soldiered on. I made it a point to not get affected by the noise around me. The developments in the content world. The work out there that was getting shared and spoken about. Trying to continuously work on self improvement rather than compare myself with others. Sticking to what I believed in. Sticking to What came naturally to me. What excited me. Where my heart lay. Supporting small businesses, unsung eateries. our local vendors, home chefs, women entrepreneurs, regional food diversity, celebrating everyday home cooked food. Not giving up.

Today I checked the stats casually. I looked at the monthly figures. Then rubbed my eyes. Then checked again. Then I did the math using the calci on the phone.

The monthly page views of the blog this month is an unprecedented 49 per cent over last month.

I do not know if it is a fluke. I have worked hard after all. I have been writing consistently here. Driven by a desire to share some positivity during the lockdown, spread some hope and joy. Maybe I was not shouting into an empty space, as I thought I was. Maybe you were reading what I wrote after all.

I do not know how next month will be but this revelation made my day. Motivated me to keep at it, but not before I tell each of you, THANK YOU. YOU ARE VERY SWEET!

Shital might get upset if you say all Gujarati food is sweet, but she is indeed one of the sweetest people around

From the #FinelyChoppedKitchen soundtrack

Chhaiya Chhaiya

To contact Shital or to see her menu, do check out her Instagram page, Shital’s Food Cottage

Story of an earlier meal at Shital’s